Horten's Incredible Illusions Page 12

  “Oh, don’t start that again.”

  “Yes, don’t start that again!” wailed May, turning on June. “I am sick and tired of being called the youngest just because I was born about ten minutes after April. And anyway, Mom says that actually means I’m the eldest, because I kicked you two out first and stayed till I was ready.”

  “She only says that to make you feel better,” said April.

  “Now you are both picking on me. It’s not fair!”

  Stuart rested his chin on his hands and watched them arguing. They were certainly easier to tell apart when they were cross: May got pink patches all over her face, and moved her head around twitchily, while June became very still and serious and upright, like a disapproving principal.

  The bickering gradually ceased until they all sat looking at him again.

  “Want me to continue?” he asked. June nodded rather stiffly.

  “Okay, let’s skip how it all started. Once we’d found the workshop, me and April discovered a sort of key inside one of the illusions. The key looks like a star, with six spokes. Every time it’s used, it sort of unlocks a magical adventure with a puzzle to solve, and after each adventure, one of the spokes disappears.”

  “What, you mean it goes poof! and vanishes in a puff of green smoke?” asked May, eyes wide.

  “Don’t be silly, May,” said June. “Metal can’t just disappear. It’s a physical impossibility.”

  “But Stuart just said it did.”

  “Well, it can’t.”

  “Yes it can, and yes it does,” said April, sounding exasperated and getting the magic star out of her pocket; it was now just a V-shaped piece of metal. She held it up, and May stared at it, mouth open.

  “But there are only two spokes left!” she exclaimed, outraged. “That means you must have had four magical adventures already and not even told us!”

  “There is no such thing as magic,” repeated June, not even looking at the star.

  “Yes, there is,” said April.

  “No, there isn’t.”

  “Is.”

  “Isn’t.”

  With a loud chair-scrape, Stuart jumped to his feet and they all turned to look at him. “Tell you what,” he said. “The only way to explain this is to show you the illusions. Can we just go to the builder’s yard? Please?”

  There was a long pause and then June shrugged. “We’re certainly not going to get anywhere by talking,” she said.

  As they were leaving the café, May took a copy of the Beech Road Guardian out of her bag and placed it on the counter.

  “What’s this?” asked the owner, who was buttering slices of bread.

  “Beeton’s leading local newspaper,” said June. “Would you like a copy for your customers?”

  “No thanks, honey.” He gave it a nudge with his elbow and it fluttered to the floor. Stuart picked it up and saw what he hadn’t seen earlier: the article in the central pages about Rowena Allsopp and the TV interview. It was illustrated with three photographs.

  Photo one showed Rowena standing next to Rod Felton, who was resting his foot on the Fan of Fantasticality. Stuart’s dad was also in the picture, gazing into space with his unfocused “inventing a crossword clue” expression.

  In photo two, the Fan of Fantasticality had snapped shut, and Rod Felton was flying sideways through the air, just inches away from cannoning into a horrified Rowena Allsopp. Stuart’s dad, meanwhile, remained in exactly the same position.

  In photo three, both Rod Felton and Rowena Allsopp had disappeared altogether, apart from a blur that Stuart thought might be Rowena’s elbow. Stuart’s father was still gazing benignly into space, having completely failed to notice the colossal disaster occurring just to his right.

  But there was something else in that third picture; something that caused Stuart to peer so closely that his nose almost touched the paper.

  “What is it?” asked April.

  He pointed.

  When the fan snapped shut, a side view of the Cabinet of Blood had been revealed. The four elaborate swords hilts were silhouetted, sticking out of it. But in the middle of the dark cluster of sword hilts, May’s camera flash had picked out a tiny, perfect, V-shaped gap.

  “Brilliant!” exclaimed April. “That’s where the star fits next!”

  CHAPTER 28

  The builder’s yard was open, and there was a truck just inside the gates, into which two workmen were loading planks.

  “You looking for your dad?” asked one of them as the triplets marched past.

  “No,” said June, who had the keys in her hand. “We’re on a fact-finding mission.”

  The shed was in the far corner of the yard. All the illusions (apart from the Reappearing Rose Bower) were still draped with heavy sheets, and as Stuart began to uncover them, it became obvious that they had been slung down rather carelessly.

  Two of the mirrors in the arch were cracked, the fan was stuck halfway open, and there was a dent in the door of the Book of Peril. Worst of all, the Cabinet of Blood had been dropped on its front, and when Stuart and the triplets managed to haul it upright, he saw with a groan that all four of the sword handles were bent. He and April had never yet managed to remove the swords from the cabinet, and he imagined that they would have even less chance now.

  “I’ll go and borrow a wrench,” said April, dashing out of the shed again.

  Stuart gave the cabinet a push to see whether it still spun, and it whipped around at a satisfactory speed, casting ruby reflections across the other illusions. Despite the array of scratches and dents, he felt a thrill of pride in his great-uncle’s creations, and a sudden urge to show them off.

  “We’re waiting,” said June, tapping her foot impatiently.

  “Okay. Each of these tricks is a brilliantly engineered stage illusion,” he explained. “For each one so far, we started by finding how the trick mechanism works, and then that led us to the socket where the magic star fits. It all began with the Pharaoh’s Pyramid.”

  He pulled open the snake handle on one of the pyramid’s sides and crawled in. “This is really clever. You’ll see that, when I close it, I can escape out of the back by pressing a button in the floor.” He looked up at the pair of identical faces. One of them was looking stern, in a calm sort of way, and the other looked more excited, like a kid waiting for a puppet show curtain to open—and he realized that, for the first time since he’d met them, he actually knew which one was which.

  “You’re June,” he said, pointing to the first, “and you’re May.”

  “Yes, we know,” said May. “You don’t have to tell us.“

  “And, actually,” added June, “it’s rude to point.”

  Grinning, Stuart closed the pyramid door, waited for the luminous stars to become visible, and then pressed the button in the center of the floor.

  There was a nasty clanking, grinding sound—the sort of noise you get when a chain comes off a bicycle—and one of the pyramid sides juddered. A minute crack of light, the width of a hair, became visible. Stuart gave the side a light push, and then a harder one, but it didn’t move.

  “I thought you were supposed to be reappearing,” shouted one of the triplets.

  “I’ve got the wrench,” he heard April say breathlessly. “Where’s Stuart?”

  He leaned his full weight against the side, and the hair’s-breadth crack doubled in width. “In here,” he shouted through it. “The side’s stuck. I think it might have been damaged when it was moved. Can you try all the handles?”

  He heard a series of effortful grunts from April, followed by a dejected “No.”

  “I’ll get a crowbar,” she added, disappearing again.

  Stuart sat in humiliated silence until she returned a couple of minutes later and, with much heaving and levering, managed to pry open a gap wide enough for him to wriggle out.

  June and May were standing with their arms folded.

  “Well, that was impressive,” said May. “Not.“

  “Wa
it till you see how the Arch of Mirrors works,” said April indignantly. “It’s brilliant!”

  She knelt beside the arch and flipped the fake mirror at the bottom. There was a loud snap, and she looked up at Stuart, white-faced, the broken mirror in her hand.

  “It strikes me that there is evidence here of poor workmanship,” said June, getting out her notebook.

  “It strikes me,” said Stuart, his temper rising, “that there’s evidence of the person who arranged for these tricks to be moved not telling the people who were moving them that they were fragile and should be handled with care.”

  April got to her feet. “Stuart, I’m really, really sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” he muttered. “Let’s see what we can do with the Cabinet of Blood. We’ve never even managed to open this one,” he added, for the benefit of April’s sisters.

  They went over to inspect it.

  The four sword hilts were no longer all clustered together, as they’d been in the photograph, but splayed outwards. The neat little V-shaped gap visible in the newspaper was now a space big enough to put a whole hand into.

  Visible between the sword hilts was a tiny ring-pull, colored the same ruby-red as the rest of the door. Stuart reached up to tug at it, but at full stretch could only just hook the first joint of his finger through the ring.

  April looked away tactfully while he struggled.

  “You better do it,” he said, stepping back, and watched as she gave the ring a tug. Nothing happened.

  “I can feel something when I pull it, though,” she said. “It’s as if I’m releasing a catch or a spring.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Stuart. “Do it again,” and this time, when she pulled, he reached up and grasped the hilt of the lowest sword. And smoothly, easily (despite its bent handle), he drew it out of the door.

  He reached up for the next, and April (with her other hand) took out the top two, and the door of the cabinet swung open. The interior was painted a dull gold, dimly reflecting their faces.

  “So I suppose Teeny-Tiny Tony’s assistant would step into the cabinet,” said April, “and then the door would close, and then Teeny-Tiny would shove the swords back in.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call that much of a trick,” said June. “I mean, all the assistant would have to do is crouch down when the door’s shut, and the swords wouldn’t go anywhere near her.”

  “Easy peasy lemon squeezy,” added May.

  “So what’s that then?” asked Stuart, pointing. Inside the cabinet, protruding from the back wall, were two gold loops like big bracelets, one at neck height for an adult, one at waist height.

  “They’re to make sure the assistant doesn’t move,” said April. She hopped into the cabinet, stood against the back wall and clicked the lowest of the loops shut around her chest. Then she reached up and snapped the other one around her forehead.

  “Go for it, Stuart,” she said, grinning.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Your great-uncle hasn’t let us down yet, has he?”

  “Okay.”

  Stuart shut the door of the cabinet, and there was a sort of squeak and then a giggle from April. He picked up one of the swords.

  “What on earth do you think you’re doing, Stuart?” asked June, sounding more like a principal than ever.

  “You still okay, April?” called Stuart.

  “I’m fine.” April sounded surprisingly near, almost as if she weren’t inside the cabinet at all.

  “So shall I put the first sword in?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” screamed May, lunging forward. “You’re going to kill my sister! I know you’re going to kill her!”

  CHAPTER 29

  “Stop immediately,” commanded June, grabbing Stuart’s sword arm. “I order you to stop.”

  “Help!” screamed May. “Help! He’s murdering April!”

  The door to the shed suddenly opened, and everyone stopped yelling. The triplets’ father was standing there, looking irritated.

  “What’s going on?” demanded Mr. Kingley.

  “Nothing,” said everybody. Stuart hid the sword behind his back.

  “Then it’s a very noisy nothing. Where’s April?”

  “Here, Dad,” she said. “At the back of the red cabinet. Spin it around.”

  Doubtfully, Mr. Kingley reached out a hand and rotated the cabinet, and Stuart and the other triplets gasped as April came into view, standing on the outside of the cabinet, the gold loops still fixed around her forehead and chest, her heels resting on a tiny platform. She grinned at their startled faces.

  “As the door closed, the whole back wall swiveled around,” she said. “So it doesn’t matter how many swords are shoved in, I’m actually completely safe.”

  “Swords?” repeated Mr. Kingley. “Who’s fooling around with swords?”

  “As you know, Dad,” said June loftily, “I’m not a fooling-around sort of person. I proceed carefully and methodically in everything I do.”

  “And what about your sisters?”

  “As the eldest, I’ll make sure they do the same.”

  “You are not the eldest!” screamed May.

  “I promise we’ll be careful,” said April solemnly and not very believably.

  Her father sighed. “Someone told me when you were born that girls would be less trouble than boys. To which I say, Ha ha ha.”

  There was a pause.

  “Please, Dad,” said the triplets, and then all three grinned hopefully at their father with smiles that were absolutely identical.

  He rolled his eyes. “Any more yelling and I take the key back. Stuart …”

  “Yes.”

  “I leave you in charge.”

  Mr. Kingley left the shed.

  The girls looked at Stuart.

  “I’m in charge,” he said. It was a brilliant feeling.

  He helped April release herself from the cabinet, and they both pushed the swords back into the door.

  “I am prepared to admit,” said June grudgingly, “that the cabinet trick is quite clever.”

  “But it’s not actually magic,” squeaked May. “Not real magic.”

  April rolled her eyes. “We’ve already explained about eight hundred times that you need to use the magic star to unlock the real magic bit.”

  “Go on then.”

  “Well, I don’t know if we can,” said April worriedly. Stuart was trying to push the bent sword hilts back together, to re-create the tiny V-shaped gap that he’d seen in the photo, but they were too far apart.

  April tried to help, but the springy, twisted metal resisted their efforts. Minutes went by; Stuart could feel himself getting red in the face.

  “It’s no good,” he said flatly, abandoning the task. “We can’t do it.”

  And for once it wasn’t April who contradicted him. It was June.

  “We can,” she said.

  “How?”

  “Four swords, four of us. If we each push on one from a different angle, we’ve got a good chance of closing the gap.”

  Stuart looked at April. “June’s right, you know,” she muttered.

  Slowly he nodded. “But think what that would mean….” he replied.

  “What?” demanded May. “What would it mean?”

  “It would mean you would both come along with us.”

  “Along where?”

  “Along to wherever we’re going. Wherever the magic star sends us. The desert, or a hall of mirrors, or a weird maze.”

  “Or a palace full of treasure,” added April. “And once we’re there, we have to solve a puzzle before we can get back. It’s really amazing.”

  “What if you don’t solve it?” asked May.

  There was a pause, and then May let out a squeak of horror.

  “You mean we might all get stuck there?”

  “Stop screeching, May,” said June, stepping forward. “This is all made up anyway. There’s no such
thing as magic, and as a campaigning journalist, I’m prepared to prove it. And as a press photographer, you should be prepared to document it.” She placed a hand on one of the sword hilts. “Shall we try?”

  Stuart hesitated for a tiny moment, weighing the options. On one side of the scales stood the triplets, shouting, arguing, issuing orders, taking absolutely no notice of what he was saying (even though their father had put him in charge); but on the other side was the next letter clue—and Charlie. And small as Charlie was, the scales were tipping in his favor.

  “Okay,” Stuart said. “Let’s do it.”

  CHAPTER 30

  All four of them grasped a sword hilt.

  “On the count of three,” said Stuart, “push them together as hard as you can, and then April can slip in the magic star. One … two—”

  “Shouldn’t April hold the star in place before we push?”

  “What, and get my fingers totally crushed? Thanks very much, June.”

  “It was just a suggestion.”

  “A really stupid one.”

  “I’m in charge,” said Stuart.

  “Please don’t call me stupid, April.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “That’s what you were implying.”

  “June was only making a suggestion, you know.”

  “That’s just typical—you always weigh in on June’s side.”

  “I do not.”

  “May, I don’t need you to defend me—I’m perfectly capable of defending myself. What I was saying to April was—”

  “I’M IN CHARGE SO WILL YOU ALL PLEASE JUST SHUT UP!” bellowed Stuart.

  There was an astonished silence. May and June’s eyes were round with shock.

  “Got the star ready?” he asked April. She nodded, and he could see that she was biting her cheeks in an effort not to laugh. “On a count of three, then,” he continued. “One—”

  May raised her hand, as if she were in class.

  “Yes?” asked Stuart wearily.

  “I know you all think I fuss all the time, but I just wanted to point out that since this trick got damaged on the outside, how do you know it isn’t damaged on the inside as well? The magic adventure might go all wrong and be horrible and scary instead of puzzling and exciting.”